Come here till I tell you about ‘till’ in Ireland

Till (= until) has an extra sense in Irish English that means something like “in order that” or “so that [someone] can…”. A doting relative, upon meeting you after a long absence, might say “Come here till I see you”, which means “Come closer so that I can look at you properly”.

Raymond Hickey, in his essay Southern Irish English, gives the example “Come here till I tell you.” This common expression can invite a listener who is within earshot to move physically closer, but it doesn’t always: it can also serve simply to announce an item of discourse, to prepare an audience’s ears for something of interest or significance, e.g.:

Come here till I tell you what happened this morning.

Used this way, Come here till I tell you is like a longer version of Old English Hwæt! (Hark!, Lo!, Listen!, etc.; literally What!), signalling the beginning of a story, albeit usually shorter than Beowulf. Some speakers run “Come here till” together so it sounds like “C’meertle”.

T. P. Dolan has a nice entry in his Dictionary of Hiberno-English, in which he says till reflects the wider meaning of go /gʌ/ — the corresponding conjunction in Irish — and the idiom behaves “as if it were an adverbial clause of purpose”.

You can see how it works in the literary examples he provides:

Where is he till I murder him? (James Joyce, Ulysses)

Come here till I embrace you. (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

Tell me who’s to blame will yeh til I tear his friggin’ head off. (Billy Roche, A Handful of Stars)

Come here till I comb your hair. (Frank McCourt, Angela’s Ashes)

And a few more from Google Books:

“You killed my brother,” said the giant; “come here, till I make a garter of your body.” (J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands)

“Och, captain, avick! och! och! come here till I eat you!” And she flung her arm round Robinson’s neck, and bestowed a little furious kiss on him. (Charles Reade, It Is Never Too Late to Mend)

The MacManus line is one of several illustrative examples included in Michael Montgomery’s From Ulster to America: The Scotch-Irish Heritage of American English.

P. W. Joyce reported in 1910 that this till (“in order that”) was used in many parts of Ireland. Certainly it was familiar to me growing up in the west, and I still hear and use it from time to time.

Updates:

Elizabeth McGuane loves the turn of phrase Come here till I tell you, and adds the related Come here to me and Come here to me now till I tell you. Ronan Delaney believes it’s “all down to that full Irish construction Gabh i leigth anseo go… or roughly Goile’nseo go…”

John Byrne says C’mere till I tell you a question is an “old Limerickism”, while Sally Tipper says the post got her thinking about the “northern English use of while to mean till“, as in “I’ll not be back while late”; she can’t vouch for all contexts, so maybe a native can shed light.

I’ve just scanned all the Irish-influenced song lyrics in my collection trying to find an example. I’ve come up blank, except perhaps for one, and I’m not sure about that one.

You know how when people write the lyrics to their own songs inside album covers they don’t always write down word-for-word what they actually sing? Well, there’s a point in the song Across the Water by Jimmy Gregory where he sings, “so [that] we can be together once again” (I’ve bracketted “that” because it appears in some refrains only), but what’s printed in the album cover is, “till we can be together once again“. I’m not sure what to make of this, because neither version seems to be what is literally meant, but arguably it suggests that “till” and “so that” are interchangeable.

The full chorus: “So carry me across the dark old water. Guide me safe into the harbour. In your love I will find shelter (so that / till) we can be together once again.”

@Jonathan Speaking of which, a few months ago I shared an anecdote with Stan that perhaps merits wider circulation. My father had just phoned a taxi and said, “I’m after booking a taxi for tomorrow”, meaning, “in order to book a taxi for tomorrow”. It amused me to know that in Ireland it would mean something different, but more than that, it was an example in the wild that confirmed the ambiguity that I perceived when I first learnt about the Irish “after”. (As you know, confirmation is always welcome in linguistics.)

Amelia: You’re welcome! I hope you enjoy your stay here. If you’re interested, you’ll find more posts on Irish English in the archives.

Jonathon: That seems to be the general conclusion regarding how the idiom arose in Irish English. When I began looking into it I found that its history and usage were a lot more complicated than I would have expected. For example, in old texts it often refers to the future; and it seems there’s a similar construction in Welsh. So I’ll try to blog about it sometime.

Adrian: I’m not sure what to make of that example. (At first I assumed it was a romantic song, then I thought it was about love of one’s homeland, then I thought it might be an allegorical song about religious faith.) Whatever the lyric’s intended meaning, it does seem to point to a degree of interchangeability between till and so that, as you inferred.

On song lyric discrepancies, an interesting example I came across in my student days is the difference between the band version and the piano version of the Red House Painters’ Mistress: the former has “I’ve had enough of these / brutal beatings and name callings”; the latter has “I want a piece of these / brutal beatings and name callings”. The inconsistency itself becomes part of the sad story.

Dawn: That is interesting! Thanks for letting me know. I specified Hiberno-English because that’s what I’m familiar with, but there are many parallels between the areas’ dialects.

The OED calls this this particular use Scottish and Irish, and dates it to an 1881 glossary of Scots English. That it predates the 1881 glossary is clear.

It’s interesting to me that “till” was chosen to represent the Irish conjunction–there were similar (prepositional) uses of “till” in Middle English and Old English, particularly in the north, but nothing like this in Modern English. Makes me wonder just how far back this particular use of “till” really goes.

I’m from Newfoundland, Canada and we (many of us, anyway) are familiar with a similar usage of ’till’. My grandmother used to use “Come here till I see you” in that affectionate “Come over here so I can get a good look at you” sort of way.

As well, if you’re in a fix of some sort and someone is coming to help you, they might say, “Stay where you’re at till I comes where you’re to”. I hear this as “Stay where you are until I can get there, too” or as “Stay where you are until I can find you” in the case that you’re lost, in the woods, in the dark (which actually happened to me, once. Ahem.).

Pat: Thanks for confirming it. Funny how easily we overlook the strangeness of idioms familiar to us.

Kory: That’s really interesting. Sadly, my knowledge of Irish and the language’s history is nowhere near strong enough for me to hypothesize about this.

gravitas&giggles: Ah, so it has made its way across! This pleases me. I have an online friend (“Irish by birth, Newfoundlandler by avocation”) who writes about the two places’ respective dialects sometimes. Stay where you’re at till I comes where you’re to… is a modern wonder of prepositional persistence. I hope you weren’t lost in the woods in the dark for long.

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